New Poll: 30% Of Yankees Fans Know Nothing About Baseball

During the top of the 6th inning, the YES Network revealed the results of their nightly text poll which asked if viewers thought Ken Griffey Jr. would be a first ballot Hall of Famer or not.

It's a really stupid question, right? I mean, he is one of the guys that gets named when you talk about players who people think almost definitely didn't take performance enhancing drugs, probably the most iconic player of his era, played 22 seasons in the Bigs, made the All-Star team in 13 of them, has 630 home runs, won the 1997 AL MVP, has five more top 5 finishes and won 10 straight Gold Gloves while playing a premium defensive position. He has a better chance of becoming the first unanimus HoF inductee in the history of the game than not getting in on the first ballot.

Uh...

Michael Kay and Al Leiter took the results of the vote to task on air, so I'm not exactly breaking new ground here, but I can certainly use more vulgarity than they did.

Seriously, what the fuck? We think HoF voters are clueless, but if the vote was conducted among people who responded to a YES Network text poll, they would have made him wait an entire year (at the least) to get in because... um... they are fucking clueless?

I think there are a few possibilities here:

• People honestly have no concept of what it takes to get into the HoF and/or Ken Griffey's career because 14 year old kids are the only ones who respond to text polls and they weren't mentally conscious when Griffey was in his prime.
  
  
• It's a small sample size and, as we've delved into before, that sample is badly skewed.
  
  
• They are stupid. No one has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
  
  
• The respondents are only Yankee fans, as opposed to baseball fans. But even still, if the only time you watched Griffey was when he played the Yankees and listened to the broadcast, there's a good chance that one of the announcers - amid the praise the were lavishing upon him over the clip of the home run he stole from Jesse Barfield - specifically referred to him as a "first ballot Hall of Famer".
  
  
• They just pressed the wrong button.
  
  
• Voters are confusing the term "first ballot" with "unanimous". Maybe people have just enough knowledge about the game to know that no one has ever gotten all the vote in their first year of eligibility but don't know the term or aren't paying close enough attention to the question.

It's probably a combination of all of these and some other things that I couldn't think of but I'm leaning towards the last one. One way or another, the results of the voting either illustrate the stupidity of the question or of the sample. Or both.

Today In Gross Overreactions

After last night's game, the Boston media questioned David Ortiz about his 0 for 7 start and asked if he was concerned that this might be indicative of another slow beginning for the slugger. Ortiz, unamused, justifiably responded unpleasantly:

"Shit happens. Then you guys talk shit. Two fucking games already. Motherfuckers are going crazy. What's up with that, man? Shit. There's fucking 160 games left. Y'all fuckers go ahead and hit for me."

Ortiz then threw a jar of his spicy mango salsa at the assembled writers and stormed off to continue his months-long quest to get the to bottom of his positive steroid test.

While I may have made up that last sentence, Ortiz brings up a very valid point. We're just two games into a six month-long season. There have been any number of things that have been overreacted to over the past three days, but in my opinion none has been more egregious than the hosannas thrown at Joba Chamberlain because he recorded two strikeouts in the eighth inning last night.

I'm tired of reading about Joba Chamberlain. For nearly three years now, every pitch he's thrown, every fist he's pumped, every start he's made, every trot from the bullpen, every fastball that's fallen short of our expected velocity has been overanalyzed to death.

I refrained from commenting when it was announced he would pitch out of the bullpen this year. It's not the role in which I want to see Chamberlain, but someone had to lose the competition, and I'd probably be just as unhappy if Phil Hughes were banished to the bullpen for another year. I still hope the Chamberlain will be a starter in the long haul, so perhaps my crankiness today is driven by those feelings.

But I'm absolutely stupefied by the sheer volume of things I've heard and read proclaiming that last night's performance signifies that 2007 Joba is back.

I've seen the picture of him roaring and fist pumping in about seven different places. I heard Jorge Posada use his post-game interview with Kim Jones as an excuse to get up on his soapbox and say he thought Joba belonged in the pen all along. I heard Kay, Singleton, and Leiter trot out the same old tired debate lines that have been beaten to death over the past two and half years. I heard the normally level-headed Jack Curry say on the post-game show that Chamberlain has to earn the eighth inning job and his performance last night did just that. I've read countless pieces this morning, both from the beat writers and the blogosphere, that have waxed poetic about Joba recapturing his former fire.

To which I quote David Ortiz: "There's fucking 160 games left!" Joba was great last night, there's no questioning that. But have we forgotten that he was horseshit on Sunday night? Did we forget that he needed 33 pitches to get four outs, that his fastball was sitting at about 92-93 MPH, and that he continued to nibble and not challenge hitters? Do we forget that Sunday's appearance reminded us of all the troublesome aspects of Joba's 2009 season that we've analyzed and debated and beaten into the ground over and over again? Or does that get thrown out the window because he had a great (2/3 of an) eighth inning last night?

I'm not trying to say that Joba can't or won't be a weapon out of the bullpen this year. I'm not saying that the bullpen isn't where his ultimate fate lies. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be happy with his performance last night. But before we go lionizing him like it's August of '07 all over again, before we declare him The Eighth Inning Guy, before we go plastering his mouth agape, fist pumping picture on another post, could we please, please just step back for a minute and realize that last night was just one game and that it doesn't guarantee that the rest of Joba's 2010 campaign will play out like the final two months of the 2007 season?

Today In Tabloid Hysteria

The Yankees have only played one game and there's not much in the way of meaningful conclusions to draw from it. Should we A) wait for the season to progress a little further and see which of the things we saw Opening Night actually develop into legitimate trends or B) start panicking because the Yankees bullpen is grossly inadequate and has an ERA of 13.50!?!1!??

Your move, George A. King III:

BOSTON - Could the Yankees regret Phil Hughes beating out four other arms to cop the fifth spot in the World Champions' rotation?

If you're asking if the Yankees will regret making the potentially catastrophic mistake of choosing the best pitcher for the open spot in their starting rotation, I think the answer is probably "no". Regardless of what happens this year, I think the Yankee brass is going okay with the fact that they picked the guy who was throwing the best during Spring Training. And of course, whether the decision turns out well or doesn't has nothing to do with how the bullpen performs and everything to do with how Hughes fares in the rotation.

But how good would Hughes have looked Sunday night out of the pen in that ugly 9-7 loss to the Red Sox in Fenway Park?

How good would True Yankee Set-Up Man™ Joba Chamberlain© have looked back there, with his blazing fastball and unhittable slider, back in his natural role as a reliever? Oh, that's right. He came out of the pen, needed 33 pitches to get through an inning and a third and gave up a run.

I've found that pitchers generally look better in your mind than they do on the mound. When you're just imagining them facing the other team, it's like "Pfffttttsssssssssss, zooooooommmmm, wooosssssshhhhhhhh! STRIKE OUT!!!"

/makes stupid faces and exaggerated pitching motions

Unfortunately, in real life, the batter has a say in what happens and he generally doesn't give a shit about how you think that pitcher should look or perform.

The "Argument That Never Ends" is supposed to be about Chamberlain's role. Now, maybe that same debate should center around Hughes.

Well, George, if you could take you own arguments to their logical conclusion, you'd realize that this debate still does involve Chamberlain. Both of them should be in the bullpen while one of two guys who are older and worse than them occupy a spot in the starting rotation? That's a terrible solution on two fronts because it's both ineffective and short-sighted. That's a tough trick to pull off. But what would you expect from the guy who said Aceves was "leading the race to be the 5th starter" three appearances into Spring Training?

It's a poor allocation of resources to put superior pitchers in the bullpen when they are capable of starting (not to mention the fact that neither Hughes nor Joba would even be the closer). They aren't going to get enough high leverage innings to justify their presence there. It doesn't make sense for the future of the franchise either, because the two pitchers who have the best chance of holding down spots in the starting rotation over the long term would be stuck in the 'pen. But other than that, the plan is GENIUS!

Pleading The Fifth (Starter)

So far this spring, we've tried valiantly to steer clear of the 5th starter conversation, mostly because it's so far from being decided and thus is prone to baseless speculation. In fact, on Monday we used it as an example of the type overplayed subject that we typically try to avoid after a certain point of saturation. However, at the risk of boring you all to fucking tears, I'm going to run down some of the thoughts I have about this that go against the conventional New York tabloid wisdom.

First, regardless of what Joe Girardi and Dave Eiland would like you, Sergio Mitre and Chad Gaudin to believe, the 5th slot in the rotation is not an open competition. Obviously, it's in the best interest of the Yankees' coaches to try to convince Mitre or Gaudin that they are competitng for a spot as a motivational tool. Those two might find their way into the bullpen or increase their trade value as a corollary. In the short term, it might make even some sense to seriously consider one of them for that 5th spot. But in the big picture of the franchise, looking beyond 2010, it makes no sense.

As Joe from RAB pointed out last night, there's almost nothing in Sergio Mitre's track record that suggests he could be successful as a starter for a team in the AL, much less the AL East, much less the Yankees. The same probably could be said for Gaudin, but he has had better results thus fan into his career and has the ability to float between the rotation and the bullpen when needed. Either guy would be a decent option as a spot starter or in the case of an injury, but I don't think they should be the first choice when camp breaks regardless of how well they've been pitching. Small sample sizes and all of that.

As such, this is a essentially a two horse race between Hughes and Chamberlain with Alfredo Aceves being the only other candidate with a real shot. Considering that arming the top four places in their rotation cost them $62.75M this year, the Yankees should understand the value of a starting pitcher as well as any team. Hughes, Chamberlain and to a lesser extent Aceves are young, have high ceilings and several years of team control remaining. They are the ones who have the best shot at becoming low-cost rotation options for years to come.

The Yanks should be concerned with winning this year, but since their top four starters are so solid, they can probably afford to give that last spot (at least initially) to one of the players who is most likely to help the franchise in that role long term even if they haven't been the best this spring.

So what happens to the two guys out of the top three who don't get the first crack at the 5th spot? River Ave. Blues already discussed why it would be a waste to send Hughes and Aceves back to the minors, so they go to the bullpen. But what about Joba? Might he benefit from a trip down to the farm if he doesn't find his groove by the end of Spring Training?

Here are the two most oft-cited arguments against sending a player who has already achieved MLB success back to AAA:

1. They have nothing left to prove.
   
   
2. You are wasting their production by leaving them off the Major League roster.

As for the first one, this is more of a mental issue than a statistical one and probably varies on a case by case basis. Joba may take umbrage with being sent back to Scranton and that in turn could harm his production. More importantly though, I don't think that this platitude even applies to the 2010 version of Joba.

The last time Joba pitched in the minors, Doug Mientkiewicz was still on the Yankees. He's only thrown 88 1/3 innings down on the farm and only 8 in AAA. Compare that to Phil Hughes, who has 330 MiLB IP under his belt.

More importantly - as we so often remind ourselves when trying to reason with those who think Joba was born to be a reliever - he's not the same pitcher he was in 2007. He's not working with the same velocity and is now attempting to mix in his curveball and his changeup significantly more often. I doubt Joba would be happy with a demotion, but I'm fairly certain it might help him work on some of the skills it takes to be a starting pitcher, i.e. being efficient with his pitch count and refining his curve and change.

In regards to the second point, it's probably true that stashing Joba in Scranton would result in a lesser pitcher taking his spot in the Major League bullpen. However, due to bullpen chaining, it's not likely to make that much of a difference. That drop off appears even less significant when weighed against the positive benefits it could have on his long term development.

All things considered, Joba starting the year in AAA might be the best case scenario. Hughes winning the job and pitching well while Joba learns some important starting pitcher skills in Scranton might set the Yankees up the best for next year when both Andy Pettitte and Javier Vazquez could potentially be gone.

While most of the mainstream commentary on the 5th starter has focused on the 2010 season alone, I think it's important to focus on how the decisions that are made this Spring factor into the fate of the franchise over the next couple of years. Because you can be sure that's what Brain Cashman is doing.

What Went Wrong With Wang

As a fan of the Yankees in general and of Chien-Ming Wang in particular, it was extremely difficult to watch the demise of the former staff ace play out over the course of the past two years.

Wang started out 2008 strong, winning 6 of his first seven starts. Then he hit a rough patch, working up an ERA of 6.45 over his next six outings before briefly getting back on track just as the second round of interleague play was beginning. Of course, he injured the arch of his foot running the bases after 5 innings of shutout ball in Houston and it was all downhill from there.

When he came back in 2009, he had one of the worst three game stretches possible to begin the season. In just six innings, he gave up 23 runs. Wang had transformed from a dominant sinkerballer to a batting practice pitcher.

What caused this seismic shift?

According to pitch f/x data from FanGraphs (which only dates back to 2007), 73% of the pitches Wang threw in '07 and '08 were sinkers. However, in 2009, only were 57% sinkers. Is that possible? I know it's a small sample size, but it's hard to believe that he would have changed his repertoire that dramatically.

From my read of the data, it seems as though Wang was throwing the same amount of sinkers, but some were so flat that they were being miscategorized as two-seam fastballs. Two-seamers move similarly to sinkers but less downward and more to the right. Lets take a look at the velocity and movement of Wang's versions of those pitches:

In 2009, it appears that Wang's sinker was actually straighter and sunk more than in previous years. However, that can be explained.

Wang has always thrown sinkers that were miscategorized as two seamers, but there was a sharp increase in 2009:

So the movement on his sinker looked better in pitch f/x because all of the ones that were so flat that they were identified as two-seamers were taken out of the sample. So it's not that Wang's pitches sank less, instead they started running more side to side. So much so that they basically became a different pitch.

As Pat Androila pointed out at the the Hardball Times yesterday, Wang's numbers against lefties have always been bad, but were especially terrible in 2009. Why? I have a bit of a theory about this. I think Wang's increased side to side movement in '09 caused him to have difficulty throwing strikes (highest BB/9 of his career at 4.1), in addition to making the pitches that did travel through the zone much more hittable, particularly to lefties (gave up a 1.146 OPS against southpaws).

In general baseball terms, some pitches travel through the strikezone on planes that are more difficult to square up with than others. My contention is that those elite pitches find slots - angles of movement - that run counter to the barrel of the bat and minimize the time that they can be struck squarely. From the batter's perspective, this is similar to a golf swing. The longer your clubface is square through the impact zone, the better chance you have of hitting the ball straight. If your club is turning on the way through, you need to get very lucky to hit it flush.

Randy Johnson's slider was death to lefties because it crossed the zone from an extremely wide angle, diving down and to the right. Mariano Rivera's cutter is even tougher than lefties than it is on righties because it veers in on their hands and away from the thick part of the bat.

Though it seems odd to say now, Wang's sinker was one of those elite pitches over the course of almost three full seasons. Batters knew it was coming 3/4 of the time and still had trouble making solid contact. I remember Brandon Inge saying during an interview played on a broadcast that he used to literally try to swing under the pitch and would still sometimes drive it into the ground.

Take a look at these two graphics I made from Wang's at bat against Nick Markakis in the first inning of the game on April 8th, 2009. But keep in mind that this is far from exact; I'm trying to provide a 2-D visualization for a 3-D problem. The yellow lines represent some potential slots that Markakis' bat could fall into while the red represents the trajectory of Wang's pitch. The graphic on the left is meant to resemble a sinker and the one on the right shows what pitch f/x would classify as a two-seamer.

An effective sinker by Wang is running nearly perpendicular to the bat once it reaches the strikezone, while his drifting 2-seamer is much closer to parallel. They often say baseball is a game of inches and the break on Chien-Ming Wang's sinker is a perfect example of that.

Of course, this doesn't get to the part of the scenario that any team looking to sign Wang actually cares about: Will he ever be able to command the sinker that made him so effective before his injury in Houston again?

When Wang is finally able to pitch this year, it will have been almost two years since he could throw enough effective sinkers to be a solid Major League starter. It seems as though the Yankees messed up his rehabilitation by telling him not to exercise his legs when recovering from his lisfranc sprain, which probably contributed to his inability to find his old sinker. It took an intricate combination of forces and no small amount of touch to toss that pitch and his failed rehab might have thrown him irreparably off course. To continue with the nautical analogy, he might have already run ashore and there's no telling if he will be able to rebuild his ship.

The troubling part is that the line between being awesome and awful for Wang is so thin. It only takes one bad pitch to ruin an at bat, and just a 17% drop in good sinkers made him one of the worst pitchers in the history of the game over his first three starts. He's never thrown good enough offspeed pitches to get guys out so any team who gives him a deal is betting on whether or not he recoups the magic sinker. Personally, I hope Wang finds it. Objectively, I don't think he will.

The Fallacy Of A Hot September

In the beginning of every season, we are forced to look at extremely small sample sizes in order to evaluate performance, which grow larger as the year progresses. It takes a while, but over the summer months, trends become realities and we begin to see who the best players and teams are. But before those positions can be solidified, the schedule winds down and heads into the postseason. Then, broadcasters, analysts and fans all try to identify who the hottest teams are heading into October and the big picture is viewed in terms of increasingly small sample sizes once again.

But does being hot heading into the playoffs really forebode success once you get there? The 2007 Rockies were the most recent poster child of this theory, skyrocketing from 6.5 games back and only 5 games over .500 as late as September 16th and finally sneaking into the postseason via a play-in game against the Padres. From there they swept their way to the World Series but were ultimately dismantled by the Red Sox.

Of course, the '07 Rockies are just one end of the spectrum. On the other hand, you have the 2000 Yankees who turned into a train wreck down the stretch, going 2-12 over their final 14 games, ending the season on a 7 game losing streak and nearly blowing the division. That Yankee team of course went on to beat the Indians, Mariners and Mets and unlike the above mentioned Rockies, actually won the World Series.

Today at The Faster Times, Lisa Swan from Subway Squawkers looked at how every playoff team since the year 2000 performed in September and how it correlated to their success in the postseason. Surprise, surprise... there is essentially no connection at all. Click through for the details.

In a season bereft of any really close pennant races, but the same amount of articles to be published, scribes will be churning out columns trying to identify who is primed for October based on the way they are playing now. Someone is probably writing one about the Yankees right now. Most columnists make a living trying to find story lines. Unfortunately for them, if you want to foretell the future in baseball, you be better off breaking out the crystal ball.

What A Difference A Day Doesn't Make

Since August 9th, when the Yankees completed their four game sweep of the Red Sox, they have been on top of the baseball world. They've had the best record in the majors at that point (69-42) and are tied for the best record since (24-11). Much credit goes to their offense, who plated 6.26 runs per game over that time, which would put them on pace to score over 1000 runs if carried out over an entire season. But more importantly, they've relied on solid pitching, holding their opponents to 2 or fewer runs 14 times in the 35 games and winning every one of those.

Andy Pettitte was a major contributor to that success, going 4-0 with a 3.48 ERA while the team went 6-1 in games he appeared in. He was easily the second best starting pitcher on the Yankees over that stretch behind CC Sabathia and one might say the Yankees only other reliable starter behind the big fella.

Yesterday, Matt noted that the the Yankees starting pitcher for tonight, who was supposed to be Andy Pettitte, was listed as "TBA". As he conveyed earlier today, Pettitte was scratched due to a shoulder fatigue, casting some doubt on the Yanks' playoff rotation.

Meanwhile, in Boston, Daisuke Matsuzaka, who many had left for dead this season after he was exiled to Fort Myers, made a triumphant return to the Red Sox rotation, throwing six innings of shutout ball against the Angels. It seemingly breathed life into a team that had just begun to secure it's playoff spot and left some Boston scribes positively giddy.

After the Red Sox won that game 4- 0 1, the now infamous battle between Carlson and Posada took place, which will most likely cost the Yanks their starting catcher for 5 or 6 games coming down the stretch. Posada's actions led several beat writers to chide him as if he were their son, all pointing to the fact that he could have harmed the Yankees postseason chances if someone got injured during the brawl.

As a result, it might seem as though the Yankees are swirling in chaos while the Red Sox are poised for postseason glory. Fortunately for Yankees fans, the truth, as always, lies somewhere in between. Matsuzka is not likely to have completely reinvented himself nor is Pettitte's shoulder injury necessarily going to have an ill effect going forward. Posada will serve his suspension and his place will be filled just fine by Jose Molina and Francisco Cervelli.

With the finish line now in view, every little thing that happens takes on a percieved added significance. Every loss can be portrayed as a harbinger of a mortal weakness and every triumph an indication of What It Takes To Win In October®. Go ahead and read the tea leaves, but don't forget that they are going to look different every single day until October 7th.

April Progress Report: Bullpen

[21 games into the season represents roughly 1/8th of the schedule, and the end of the first month seems like a good time to analyze what has thus far occurred. Following a tradition started by Boston Bren, mid-term evaluations are called Progress Reports (not Report Cards). These ratings are somewhat subjective, as they attempt to balance expectations and salary with value contributed to the team.

We already tackled the starting rotation, the infield, and the outfield]

(Click to enlarge)

By dissecting results after 21 games, we are already trafficking in small sample sizes. The fact that relievers have seen the least action of any group of players only exacerbates this problem. As I mentioned going into yesterday's game, the Yanks had the 2nd worst bullpen in the majors. Let's just take an overview to see what has gone wrong so far, and how bad it really is.

First of all, the bullpen has pitched 71 innings this year and surrendered 51 earned runs, good for a 6.46 ERA. However, if you want to be a super-apologist you could take into account that 21 of those runs came in 14 innings after Chien Ming Wang had been pulled from his two worst starts, in games that were all but over. Removing those from the equation, their ERA is 4.74, good for 19th in the MLB. Again, not good, but certainly better.

Mariano's numbers don't tell the entire story because he allowed two of Jonathan Albaledjo's inherited runners to score on Wednesday night, deflating his ERA and inflating Albie's. (He does have a 13K/0BB ratio, however). Jose Veras has a solid WHIP and good strikeout numbers but a bloated ERA because of one performance against Cleveland (the 22-4 game) where he gave up 3 runs without getting an out.

The bullpen has been poor, but there is reason to be optimistic, I think. Hopefully Brain Bruney comes back from the DL and picks up where he left off. I like what I've seen from Mark Melancon so far and David Roberston's minor league numbers are fantastic. It hasn't been a bring been a bright spot so far, but I'm willing to bet that the 'pen will be significantly better in May than it was in April.